The government should prioritize the implementation of interventions in areas where the farm-gate price of unhusked rice have fallen below P17 per kilogram, nongovernment organization Action for Economic Reforms (AER) said on Thursday.
AER made the pronouncement after the House Committee on Agriculture and Food on Wednesday approved a substitute joint resolution urging Congress to authorize the use of the rice subsidies of government agencies for the procurement of palay from Filipino farmers.
The group said “targeting” pilot areas where the rice subsidy of 4Ps beneficiaries could be channeled would make the government’s intervention for rice farmers “more practicable” and easier to implement.
“I understand that some P6 billion of the DSWD [Department of Social Welfare and Development] money will be transferred to the NFA [National Food Authority] to pilot the purchase of palay from local farmers in Regions 1 to 6,” AER President Jessica Reyes-Cantos said in a statement.
“The AER suggests that picking and choosing the pilot areas for support should follow a set of criteria. In particular, the DA [Department of Agriculture] can focus on areas where the cost of palay has gone down below P17 per kilo,” Cantos added.
In a position paper submitted to the House Committee on Agriculture and Food, the AER said the proposal to convert part of the Conditional Cash Transfer subsidy for rice into actual rice is “inefficient and costly.”
“The administrative cost is large, and the
money from such could be better spent to directly help farmers. The poor anyhow
will still be buying rice, rice being the main content of the food basket. The
better way is to make the government-procured rice accessible [physically and
financially] in the markets of the poor
communities,” the paper read.
The AER also urged the panel to include in the joint resolution the use of rice tariff collections in excess of P18 billion for cash transfers for 2019 and 2020.
“The amount that is needed to effectively address the fall in palay prices is between P4.9 billion and P7.7 billion assuming a cash transfer of P5,000 or P7,000 each,” she said.
Quezon Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga, the panel chairman, said the unnumbered joint resolution will be transmitted to the plenary when session resumes on November 4.
Enverga also said his committee will ask President Duterte to certify the joint resolution as urgent to fast-track its approval.
The unnumbered joint resolution substituted House Joint Resolution 16 and House Resolution 322 filed by Deputy Speaker for Finance Luis Raymund Villafuerte, and Majority Leader Martin Romualdez and Tingog Sinarangan Party-list Rep. Yedda Romualdez, respectively.
The joint resolution asked the DSWD and the Departments of the Interior and Local Government, National Defense, Transportation, and Environment and Natural Resources in coordination with the NFA and the DA to directly buy the palay of local planters for the Rice Subsidy Program instead of cash.
The resolution said the NFA had reported having 209,525.15 metric tons of imported rice in its custody as of August 22. It procured locally 5,864,007 bags of palay at 50 kg per bag or 293,200.35 MT.
Currently, the resolution said the warehouse of NFA is already full, noting that the problem of oversupply is expected to worsen in September and October, the peak palay harvest season.
Under the 2019 budget, the total allocation for rice subsidies amounts to P33.9 billion.
EDC discusses cash aid
Meanwhile, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said that although the Economic Development Cluster did not discuss the imposition of safeguard duty to protect local rice farmers from a surge in imports, the EDC talked about issues of cash assistance to affected farmers; and agreed that a part of the cash transfer under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program would be given as rice instead to the 4Ps beneficiaries.
The government is eyeing a total of P3-billion direct cash assistance to farmers.
“We’re doing two things, okay? Number one, to implement the idea that the part of the cash transfer will be given in rice. That is a logistics problem. So they are working it out with DSWD [Department of Social Welfare and Development] and the NFA [National Food Authority],” Dominguez said. “The other issue is the unconditional cash transfer to the most affected farmers. They are still determining who are the most affected farmers and determining how much they will provide—the assistance to them,” he added.
Nonetheless, Dominguez said they are committed to help the most affected farmers and the government “will have a budget for it because we are going to be collecting quite a bit more than the P10 billion that we did from the tariffs.” With a report by Bernadette D. Nicolas